I don’t know about you, but I love everything about cats. Most of my life, I’ve pretty much only had cats as pets and love the comfort of having them around. I know a lot of people don’t like cats because they can be little assholes sometimes, but I love little asshole cats too!

It had been a while since I had thrown a theme party, and I couldn’t decided what theme to choose, until I saw these paper plates in a store. They made me chuckle and that’s when it hit me! I need to celebrate the crazy cat lady in myself and invite all my crazy friends along for the ride. Everything, then, spiraled into cat-fueled delirium from there.

I always start my party planning by figuring out what decorations I plan to have and which of those to make myself. I am a self-proclaimed D.I.Y. Master, so making my own decor is a lot of fun for me. From the blog, Daisy Dreaming, I got the idea to make little tiny scratching posts for the food labels. I took their idea a few steps further by adding bright-colored, curled up paper clips, a little cat toy, and some fabric to the base of the post. I was incredibly happy with how they turned out!

To include a bit of the “Internet Cat” feel to my party, I made the food labels look like the oh-so-familiar cat memes you can’t escape online. Altogether, the scratching posts and food labels were popular at my party. A couple of my friends even took some home with them as party favors at the end.

Speaking of the food, I had to have some cat themed food at this party. The most popular (well, not too popular) item was the Cat Litter Cake! Most people were too grossed out by the look of it to even eat it. That just means more cake and frosting goodness for me!

This was the easiest cake I think I have ever made. It consists of a box of white cake mix and the ingredients to make it, canned chocolate frosting, and some food dye. For a more detailed tutorial click here for the recipe.

Other food I had available was strawberry mice (made with strawberries, almond slices, Twizzler candy, and mini chocolate chips), and turkey and tuna sandwiches cut into cat shapes with a cookie cutter. I also offered goldfish crackers served out of a fishbowl and chocolate candies served in a cat food bowl. The art of most of these dishes was the way in which they were presented.

Another decor/food related item I made was a full-sized cat scratching post constructed for displaying food (I put the sandwiches on a platter on it during the party). I realized that after buying all the materials for it and constructing it, it would have probably been cheaper to buy an already made one. However, it looked great and gave a little more playfulness to my food table. I also scattered random (new) cat toys all over the food table. As a fun favor for my friends’ cats’, I let my friends pick one toy to take home at the end of the party.

For my parties I always try to have a themed cocktail. To continue with the cats and fishbowl imagery, I made my guests alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions of a fishbowl cocktail. The non-alcoholic cocktail is just blue sports drink mixed with lemon-lime soda and a little blue food coloring if you want the “water” to be more blue.

The alcoholic cocktail was a bit more involved. The recipe is below:

Both cocktail versions are constructed the same way.

Most of my parties are a lot of fun, but I’ve never done anything for a cause before. This time, since both of my kitties were adopted from our local SPCA, I decided to have this party with a mission in mind: I’d raise money for the SPCA that has helped me feed my cat addiction over the years. I also raised money for a local woman who helps keep down the stray cat population in my town by running her own trap-spay/neuter-release program from her home.

On top of that, I also had a booth where my friends could adopt some real kitties that a friend was trying to find homes for. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any homes for the kitties looking for new owners, but I was able to collect a decent amount of money to donate to my specified charities!

At the adoption table I also had hand stitched little cat dolls I made for my friends and their kids as party favors. Each person could choose a doll, a tiny little collar, and an “adoption certificate” to take home.

My favorite stuffed cat ended up being the Grumpy Cat one I made for fun. My brother snagged this as soon as the party started.

As usual, I wore a costume to the party. This time I went as a Crazy Cat Lady (big surprise) complete with curlers in my hair, glasses chain, cat pajamas, and a robe covered in stuffed cats. Other friends wore cat ears, a Cat in the Hat costume, or punny costumes like name tags with “Hi my name is Alli” or “Hi my name is Tom” on them. I love that I have friends who will dress up just as much as I do.

If you love cats, I really recommend having a party that’s dedicated to all things cat. You won’t regret it, although your friends might think you are crazy.

Bonus:

Here are my kitties.

Smokie:

Martooni:

The pièce de résistance at my Crazy Cat Lady Party was the gross-looking-but-oh-so-delicious Cat Litter Cake. It’s probably the easiest cake I’ve ever made. People at all baking levels can make this one. Even kids! I dare you to try a scoop!

Before you bake the cake, make sure to get a brand new cat litter box or something similar and a new cat litter scoop. I was able to find these at dollar stores. I wrapped my scoop with cling wrap so that the cake wouldn’t fall out between the slots.

If you make this, tell me how your guests react in the comments below. My friends didn’t even touch it until I started to serve it to them in little cat food dishes. It tastes great if you can get past the look of it, and it’s perfect for serving with ice cream.

The summer is here and it’s a perfect time to have an ice cream social! I don’t see my friends and family very often, so periodically I have fun theme parties to get us all together and catch up. Ice cream is fun on its own, but it’s so much better when you have it to cool off during the hot summer. 

I wanted to have a place where my friends and their kids could have some fun, some ice cream, and cool off. It’s been a little over a year since my epic Circus/Carnival party, and I was itching to do another theme party.  With the weather heating up where I live, ice cream seemed like a good theme choice this year.

The Decor

Of course theme parties are no good without decorations. I found a few decorating ideas from browsing the internet this time. I made some of these cute fabric and paper ice cream cones using Icing Designs’ tutorial. They are fully customizable for whichever “flavors” of ice cream you want to make and fairly easy to do if you have basic sewing skills. Outside of ruffling the fabric, most of it was glued together. Pro tip: if fabric is too expensive for you to afford, find some sheets at your local thrift store. I was able to find some sheets in mint green and light pink at a fraction of the cost for these fabric ice cream cones and got some inexpensive muslin for the vanilla ones.

I decorated the wall with twisted streamers inspired by the backgrounds from the videos of the “King of Retro” and “Ambassador of Americana,” Charles Phoenix. I love kitschy mid-century aesthetic and figured the retro look would go well for old-fashioned ice cream shop decor. I also threw together some ice cream bouquets (I used silk flowers so I could reuse them for other parties, but fresh flowers would work well too). These were pretty and cute. I found the plastic waffle cups at my local dollar store and stacked pink and white flowers in them for a strawberry ice cream and whipped cream look, with a single red rose for the cherry on top. Colored frames with popsicle or ice cream prints are a nice dash of color for decorating too.

Wooden spoons are reminiscent of ice cream from my childhood, so I offered those and personalized them by painting the handles with complimentary colors of my party decor. 

The Food

The food for this party was fun to put together. I originally planned to have pre-scooped ice cream available, but my best Martha-Stewart-intentions fell to the wayside, because I ran out of time. I started pre-scooping ice cream at around 4 in the morning the day of the party. I hadn’t slept yet and still had about a thousand things to do before guests were to arrive in less than 12 hours. About 10 minutes into scooping, and only about 7 scoops later, I knew that pre-scooped ice cream was going to be scratched. To tell you the truth, scooping the ice cream during the party wasn’t that big of a problem as long as I remembered to put the containers back in the freezer regularly. I did have at least 3 or 4 ice cream scoopers available though. That sped things up.

This may be a little silly, but I thought long and hard about what brand ice cream I wanted at my party. I could have gotten those gigantic tubs of ice cream to have a lot of inexpensive ice cream to go around, but I wanted my ice cream to be of better quality. Well known brands such as Ben and Jerry or Häagen–Dazs taste great, but also cost an arm and a leg. When you’re putting on a whole party to go with your ice cream, there is no budget for $5 pints. I kept looking and got super lucky to find a fantastic “BOGO free” sale on Thrifty brand ice cream the week of my party. The days of getting Thrifty ice cream with my grandma as a child is a cherished memory, so I hoped that the ice cream was still similar in quality. It is, by the way! I got relatively plain flavors (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and mint chip) so that we could mix-in-match them, and so they would go well with the toppings. I also got rainbow sherbet as a fun flavor.  

Toppings are some of the most important parts of an ice cream social outside of the ice cream. I wanted to have a large variety, similar to what you find at self-serve frozen yogurt shops. I had candy, fruit, crushed cookies, nuts, sprinkles and such.

One of the toppings I made from scratch was my grandmother’s Homemade Chocolate Syrup. It’s thick, dark, and delicious. Click here for the recipe.

I tried to have cookie bowls for an alternative to cones or regular bowls, but they didn’t turn out so well. I followed the directions that came on the cookie bowl baking pan package, but things went wrong somewhere along the way. It may have been my fault, because I tried to halve the recipe (I’m not too good with splitting some fraction measurements). Somehow the dough was too greasy and the bowls slid apart in the oven. Luckily, the cookie still tasted good, so I added crushed chocolate chip cookies as a topping instead of the bowls. Sometimes baking disasters lead to baking ingenuity!

Failed cookie bowls 🙁

Another fun addition to the party was this super cool snow cone machine I found. I loved this so much. So many novelty items like this turn out to be complete junk, but this machine worked well and was fun to use. I liked having some non-dairy options at the party since some of my friends are lactose intolerant or vegan. I wish I had had this last year for my carnival party.

I decided to add one more sweet thing to this party (not that I needed it)! I’ve seen ice cream cone cake pops on blogs here and there, but didn’t see many with tutorials or recipes accompanying them. So I figured out how I wanted to make my own ice cream cone cake pops, and I’ve posted my recipe and instructions for them here: Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops.

I really have to recommend having an ice cream social this summer. It doesn’t have to be as fancy as mine was (if you can even call it fancy). I’ve seen many types of socials, including ones like those that happen in Long Beach, CA, where people organize neighborhood ice cream socials to get to know each other’s neighbors better. I think that’s a fantastic idea! Have fun with it and get caught up with old friends or meet new ones.

Have an awesome summer!

My ’50s-inspired ice cream shop costume!

Product list:

Snow Cone machine | Bed Bath and Beyond

Snow Cone Cups By Celebrate It™ | Michaels

Snow cone straws | Dollar Tree

Plastic waffle cone cups | Dollar Tree

Inflatable Ice Cream Cones | Amazon 

Pink frame | IKEA

Popsicle art cards | IKEA 

Ice Cream Cone baking rack/stand | Michaels (a similar stand here)

Wooden Spoons | Amazon

Ice Cream Cookie Bowl Pan | Michaels or Amazon

Paper ice cream cups | Target

Sprinkles tablecloth | Target

***I was not compensated for any products or brands listed in this post. I’ve included the names of the products I’ve used so that you can find them or something similar for a party of your own. 

One of the things I made for my Ice Cream Social recently was my grandmother’s homemade chocolate syrup. I’m not sure where the recipe originated. It could be an old recipe from a container of Hershey’s Cocoa. My family has been making it for ages and it’s always so much better than what you can find pre-made in stores and probably a little bit better for you.

I made these Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops for my recent Ice Cream Social. They were popular. I only made 12 and at some point had to hide one for myself to eat, because they were flying off the table!

They take a bit of prep and construction like most cake pops, but since they aren’t attached to a stick, they are, for me at least, much easier to make.

The cake pops are very rich! One pop was enough for me. I wasn’t able to eat my cake pop until the day after the party and the cone was a bit stale by then. I imagine all of the moistness from the chocolate and cake will make the cone less crunchy but it still tastes good and the added chocolate at the bottom of the cone is a nice surprise. It reminds me of those Nestle Drumstick cones.

So let’s get right to the giveaway!

Prize Pack #1 – (Total ARV $50.12)

This prize pack includes:

• Cupcake-2-Go cupcake carrier
• Betsey Johnson zipper pouch
• Cupcake ornament
• Cupcake bath fizz
• Doughnut candle
• Martha Stewart’s New Year’s Celebration DVD
• Cupcake magnetic page markers
• Cupcake plunger
• Doughnut sticky notes
• A frame
• Essie mini nail polish
• Doughnut sanitizer
• A glitter pencil
• A handkerchief

Prize Pack #2 – (Total ARV $47.31)

This prize pack includes:

• Cupcake-2-Go cupcake carrier
• Betsey Johnson zipper pouch
• Reusable silicone baking cups
• Doughnut candle
• Cupcake ornament
• Cupcake bath fizz (Not Pictured)
• Martha Stewart’s Homemade Holidays DVD
• Chapstick Cake Batter lip balm
• Essie mini nail polish
• A frame
• Birthday Cake Gourmet Gum
• Cupcake sticky notes
• A glitter pencil
• A handkerchief

The Rules for Entry:

To enter you must be 18+ years old and have a shipping address within the US. The giveaway will end December 25th at 11:59pm EST. Enter by filling out the Rafflecopter widget below. Only entering your contact email is required. The rest of the entry methods are optional and will only increase your odds for winning. For complete giveaway rules, click here.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I was tasked with making a pie for Thanksgiving this week, and I had some bourbon, so I looked around for a recipe I could use it in. I love bourbon and don’t mind the taste of it in desserts, so when I came across this Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie recipe from Allrecipes.com I decided to give it a shot. It was well liked on the website and included a 1/4 cup of bourbon, so I knew it must be good.

Final verdict? It was so frickin good! It has a nice chocolate and bourbon taste that goes so well with the ingredients of the pecan pie. I didn’t want to post about the recipe until I had a chance to try some myself, but it was so good I decided to make a post about it, because this is the perfect pie for the holidays. Nothing better than booze and pie at Christmas-time. The alcohol in the bourbon should be all cooked out by the time it’s complete, so anyone can eat this pie. It still retains the lovely flavor of bourbon after baking too.

The one thing I would recommend for this pie is to use a deep pie dish. The recipe makes just a little bit too much filling for a regular pie dish. As the above photo shows, the filling fit perfectly in my 1 and 3/4 inch deep pie dish.

Instead of melting the chocolate, the chips stay intact so that there are nice little nuggets of semi-sweet chocolate throughout. I really liked that.

Make sure to click the link at the beginning of the post for the recipe if you’d like to try this pie. Let me know how you like it!

What desserts are your go-to during the holidays? I’d love for you to share any recipes you love.

Happy Halloween, everyone! This is my favorite holiday and always like making some creepy treats for it too. This year I came up with Zombie Brain Brownies. They’re made from candy melts, brownie, and strawberry sauce mixed with fresh squeezed orange juice and triple sec. If you are looking for a non-alcoholic version, just omit the triple sec and add more orange juice.

If you want, you can slather some red gel over the top to make them bloody or leave it off for a more clean version. You could even get some green decorating gel and put it in the place of the blood for a more gooey oozing effect.

When you open them up some of the strawberry sauce could drip out so make sure to have some napkins around!

Have a fun and safe Halloween!

Three years ago I won a giveaway from a local movie theater and the prize was a wall-sized vinyl poster from the first Magic Mike movie. It was huge and unwieldy, but it also had nearly life-sized, half naked actors on it, so I thought the best use for it would be to put it up temporarily for a Magic Mike themed party. That party always hung on the back of my mind, but I never went through with it. Then Magic Mike XXL (the sequel) came out, and I knew now was the chance to have that party. So for the release of MM XXL on dvd, I held a Magic Mike Ladies’ Night party, and it was fantastic. We watched both Magic Mike movies, had snacks, played games, and had tons of fun.

As I do for many of my theme parties, I scour the internet for fun ideas. There weren’t very many Magic Mike parties to look at, though, which might have been a good thing, because it forced me to be more creative. I did come across some fun sweets online that would be awesome for a Magic Mike party, so I stepped out of my comfort zone of cupcakes and tried some royal-icing-topped cookies and a cake that was decorated with more than just a little frosting.

The first thing I wanted to make for the party were these awesome, funny Chippendales dancer-themed torso cookies from The Adventures of Sweet Sugarbelle. I’ve always wanted to learn how to make royal icing and the techniques for icing cookies, but it always looked like a lot of work. Turns out it is, but the results are pretty fun. I didn’t use Sweet Sugarbelle’s icing recipe though, because I forgot to get some of the ingredients, and just went with a simple recipe from Alton Brown instead. It uses raw egg whites though, so you will want to use pasteurized eggs.

My cookies are far from perfect, but I think they looked pretty cute anyway. Not sure how soon I’ll try cookie icing again though. It was more work than I realized!

I couldn’t just have cookies at this party though. One bachelorette party idea I saw pop up in my search was a male stripper cake. That would be perfect at a Magic Mike party, I thought, so I collected some easy materials (Ken doll and a wooden dowel) and affixed them to the top of a three layered chocolate and pumpkin cake. I thought three layers was probably best to give the dowel enough of a foundation to support the doll. To decorate the doll, I made him a little thong, bow tie, and cuffs from some felt and ribbon and printed out some tiny dollar bills to stuff in his undies. I threw a few dollar bills on top of the cake too, but they ended up being camouflaged since I made the cake almost the same color as the money. Oops!

The “stage” background wasn’t necessary, but the cake looked a bit boring without it. I covered a weighted box in a blue plastic tablecloth, tri-folded a large gold metallic piece of card stock, and decorated it with two fancy balloon weights, two flashlights, and a Magic Mike sign that I made. The tablecloth, card stock, balloon weights, and flashlights all came from a dollar store.

The party wasn’t all sweets though. I had Pink Panty Dropper punch, (Magic) Mike’s Hard Lemonade, a popcorn bar, and pizza. What’s a movie night without popcorn and pizza?!

Decorations included leopard print and black tablecloths, gold metallic fringe curtains, black fringe table skirt, the Magic Mike poster I showed you above, and a handmade garland of men’s thongs and bow ties! I made the garland myself. I found a package of thongs at Kmart and a few bow ties in the current Halloween costume section of a dollar store. I sewed them together, but you could hot glue as well if you don’t plan on using the bow ties or thongs again. Decorate it with some ribbon if you want to fancy it up a little. I used animal print ribbon.

After each movie, we played some Magic Mike themed games. One game I came up with was called Strip Trivia. Usually when you play a game with stripping the players have to strip, but in my game, the players got to take off a paper doll’s clothes! Except for the male body image, I hand drew all of the clothing pieces for the game.  To play the game, I asked my guests trivia questions about the movie we just watched and who ever answered first correctly, got to remove an article of clothing. The first person to remove all clothing won a prize.

The other game we played I have dubbed Place the Kiss on Mike’s Magic. It’s basically Pin the Tail on the Donkey for adults! I found the game in the bachelorette section of a party store and pasted a picture of Channing Tatum over the face to make it a little more Magic Mike themed. It was popular.

The party was a total success and I got to introduce the awesomeness of Magic Mike to a handful of my friends! This type of party would be fun for any time of year whether you just want to get the girls together, have some drinks and (respectfully) ogle some grown men or if you are throwing a bachelorette party.

Have you ever seen the Magic Mike movies or had a girls’ night in or adult sleepover party before? I’d love to hear some of your experiences or ideas for this type of party.

***I was not asked or compensated to mention any brand names in this post. Any brands that I specified are only included to help you find certain materials I used to put on this party.*** 

Welcome to October! With the holidays coming up, I thought I’d share some Oreo Truffles with you because they make great treats for all the parties you’ll inevitably be invited to during the holiday season.

If you’ve never had Oreo Truffles before, you really need to try them. They are simple to make and only include three ingredients: Oreos (or similar cookies), cream cheese, and chocolate. I’m amazed I’ve never made a blog post about them before now, to tell you the truth.

There’s something about the mixture of the cookies and the cream cheese that really makes these special. They are decadent and rich. The added chocolate coating only makes them better.

I saw these Halloween themed Joe Joe’s cookies at Trader Joe’s and thought the box was cool looking so I decided to try them. They were not very good. The chocolate cookies were fine but the filling was bland. It tasted like nothing, and definitely not vanilla. Should I just throw the box of cookies away? Continue eating the cookies and hating life? No! Just make them into Oreo Truffles! Even the blandness of the cookies could be fixed with a little cream cheese and chocolate. Once the cookies are combined with the other ingredients, they didn’t taste that much different than the truffles made with real Oreos. So if you ever end up with a crappy box of Oreo knock-offs, you know what to do!

These little truffles are great for the holidays and an easy, quick treat when you need to make something last minute.